I'm getting the overwhelming sense of this "senior players" thing to be largely guff though. Hesson has wanted McCullum at the top ever since he arrived and that's the reason this is happening; nothing more. The more we hear on the matter, the more we keep hearing from people who support Taylor, at least at the current time, and that includes the players. I don't think there's been a coup from inside the team at all.

And that's where my line of thought is leading me, you look at these players and arguably all of them are under-performing (Southee aside perhaps) and hardily commanding a place in the team to be classed as "senior players". They should be trying to improve their own games than alongside the coach, attempting to de-rail the captain.

Without looking up stats, I think I could safely say Taylor has been clearly our best batsmen for the past 12+ months and to effectively hang him out to dry over this is just shocking. Along with the fact he's lead us to Test victories over Australia and Sri Lanka in the past year and with a bit of luck, we would have gone further in the T20 WC.

Either the coach has to go, or I can't see Taylor remaining in the team personally. Certainly couldn't blame him for telling NZC to go stuff themselves and make his dollars in the T20 leagues around the world.

Look, we'll find out the nitty-gritty tomorrow, but assuming they come out with this stuff about 'Taylor's lack of communication skills and the minimal dressing room support', I'd like to know when NZ cricket became such a bunch of sensitive, namby-pamby prima donnas anyway.

So what if Taylor gets toey & isn't all 'touchy-feely' all the time. So what if he told Franklin to quit hunching his shoulders & to fire-up & show some passion. The hard-nosed approach is precisely what this team needs. Crikey, this is international cricket.

I can't know for sure, but could you ever imagine Steve Waugh or Ricky Ponting being all touchy-feely with their troops and telling them 'don't worry, it's alright' when they get out playing irresponsibly?

It was the same with the NZ side of the 80s. Tension was rife amongst the camp by the players own omission, but it gave them that edge to succeed.

Yeah, I reckon Southee would feel a bit aggrieved about how he'd been handled at times during Taylor's reign too, rightly or wrongly.

I'm getting the overwhelming sense of this "senior players" thing to be largely guff though. Hesson has wanted McCullum at the top ever since he arrived and that's the reason this is happening; nothing more. The more we hear on the matter, the more we keep hearing from people who support Taylor, at least at the current time, and that includes the players. I don't think there's been a coup from inside the team at all.

I agree. None of the players give me political vibes for a start, especially most of the seniors. Martin for example strikes me as the kind of bloke who shuts up and does his job.

The vast majority of the side are juniors or older players like Franklin and Nicol who are this close to being permadropped. I'd be amazed if they were rocking the boat. Maybe there are one or two daft blokes who are yet to be revealed, but to me this sounds like Hesson and McCullum, with maybe at a stretch Vettori since he preferred McCullum but he's been away from the side so long with injury that I doubt it.

Originally Posted by Athlai

Jeets doesn't really deserve to be bowling.

Originally Posted by Dan

in the future where we're all social justice-y Cribb can ride down the street to pick up some raw milk from Coles on a motorised esky while smoking meth, firing an RPG into the air, and carrying the case of British-import Stella he's polygamously (and privately) married alongside a genderfluid Zambian businessperson and a coke-snorting 18-year-old cyborg girl.

Selection panel:
Kim Littlejohn and Mike Hesson. Littlejohn's role is to consult with the domestic coaches and identify players. Mike Hesson has the final say. Greatbatch and Crowe and Turner are also scouts or something.

CEO: David White

Director: John Buchanan.

So presumably Buchanan is in charge of the national teams, while David White is more responsible for the finances and competitions and advertising deals etc etc?

And these people are all answerable to the board?

Is this a standard structure?

...I stopped trying to understand the structure of New Zealand Cricket when they literally didn't know if Greatbatch was the NZ Cricket Coach or not. I still don't know if he was the coach.

This shambles has been building up for years with a succession of bizarre decision after bizarre decision. The frustration that the public has been feeling has been building up and it came close to exploding last year when Wright walked away: but this has pushed everyone over the top. Time for a clean out: the board has to go.

Expect some fireworks tomorrow as White shows up to the press conference on his own without Hesson. Some hard questions are going to be asked: and I expect to see the likes of Waddle putting the boot in.

The Wellington Blaze are playing the Canterbury Magicians tomorrow at Linden Park tomorrow. I think I'll go along and give them my support. I have no doubt I'll be one of only about ten spectators going to the game. At least the women's game isn't shrouded in controversy. If the weather holds out it will probably be a good game too.

Expect some fireworks tomorrow as White shows up to the press conference on his own without Hesson. Some hard questions are going to be asked: and I expect to see the likes of Waddle putting the boot in.

I get tired of Wads' cynicism but tomorrow's press conference was made for it!

Oh yeah, lets demote the captain after he won a test in the subcontinent and replace him with someone who is not only failing miserably with the bat (which he is meant to be a specialist with now) but also has very few captaincy credentials to his name apart from he's aggressive.

McCullum can barely keep himself in the team with his batting, whilst Taylor is leading from the front and is easily our best player.

All the while NZC sit on their hands, let the senior players run riot with player power, hire Australia's cast-offs who screwed up the system in their home country, create a high-performance program/academy that systematically ruins budding fast bowlers by trying to completely overhaul their action to the point that being sent to the academy is kissing your cricket career goodbye, and generally drive the sport as a whole out of the public eye.

The ineptitude is incredible. I mean, I felt that Taylor has perhaps been a little less aggressive than he could have been but that's a product of old bowlers being innocuous and most importantly batsmen performing poorly. How is any sportsman supposed to thrive when they have to get involved in this political bull**** and not focus on getting their game right. The worst thing is that our two most able batsmen are having to deal with this leadership struggle that should have been sorted out with minimum fuss last year.

As a fan of cricket, I hope Ross Taylor goes to SA but as a fan of people not getting shafted I hope he resigns totally from NZC for a while.

This is unbelievable that a coach would not get called on this by the CEO. The problem is Hesson was literally the last man standing; there aren't any more coaches that would even bother coming here.

Stuff saying it's basically a done deal that McCullum's taking over. NZC gfy. Anyone know if there is a way of emailing NZC and telling them to gagf? Am actually giving serious thought to it.

Anyway, as far as I can see there are two possible outcomes for the SA tour:
1) We get smashed (most likely). It's alright though, because it's the number one team in the world in their own backyard, our new captain hasn't had the chance to stamp his mark on things, we're a young team, blah blah blah.
2) We do okay, maybe sneaking a draw in one of the tests. The BLACKCAPS are really showing signs of improvement! The new captain is having a positive effect already, the guys know their roles in the team so much better due to his vastly superior communication, and his tactical nous has really come to the fore in the field. Gee, we play such smart cricket.